Regreting the Future
by Aenel
Summary: Rekindling old friendships is a great way to spoil an evening.


It was one of Emma's shindigs. It always one of Emma's shindigs, half of which he dutifully attended, if only to get Storm off his back.

The heat and the noise hit him even as he shrugged off his coat. He hated these mingling things, he thought as he stepped into the boisterous room. Even in the crowd, he could never fully shake off the feeling that he was on display.

Jean was the first spot him and the first to greet him. If he had feared any awkwardness, her smile and open arms had put him at ease.

"Bishop", she'd greeted him with a hug.

He took her in an easy embrace, the familiar feel her back against his hands and the scent of her hair on him.

His heart didn't beat faster and the knowledge that she was in his past did not grieve him. But her touch comforted him and he was glad for her presence.

"It's been too long," he said.

"Come, everyone's here," was her reply.

She led him by the hand and he was happy to let her navigate the crowd. The room was full. Important dignitaries of something or other, Emma's personal invitees that no longer missed a chance to play nice with the mutants. He was not surprised. Immortality drugs will do that.

But mutants too. So many had joined that he no longer knew them all. Trailing behind Jean, he tried to find some familiar faces among the fancy dresses and Emma's stylish decór.

Hank was the first he spotted, his large blue figure easy to identify. He laughed heartily at something or other and Betsy seemed to share of his amusement, although perhaps not as loudly.

By the window, Kitty and Cypher had found a sofa to quietly chat and Rogue blew him a kiss as he passed.

Still, a party was never a party these days, but a diplomatic mission. The humans present were only there because they wanted something from them. Now, they talked and drank, later, the merriment would appear and with it, small displays of powers.

Nothing grand, nothing dangerous – a small exploding card trick perhaps, or some unexpected fireworks. A laser show set to a quiet song Stunningly localized rain over a plant. A friendly reminder of what they all could do. All very subdued. All very intentional.

Some distance off, Apocalypse spoke to a semi-circle of amazed stares.

He reminded himself to swallow down the distrust and the repulsion. Mutants were one nation now, past crimes forgiven, a bright, united, future ahead. And he tried not to think too hard of how many of his team mates greeted him warmly because of that, how many swallowed down their own repulse at what he'd done. Tonight was night for drinking, and shaking hands. A night for playing pleasant, and ducking out early when nobody was looking. Introspection could come later.

But Storm was looking now, and Jean had lead him straight to where she and Logan had been standing.  
_  
_"They dragged you into this too, bub?"

"I'm glad you could come old friend."

He smiled at Storm's greeting. After all he'd done, she could still call him friend and mean it.

He let himself relax and be drawn to their conversation. They laughed at the strange items and food that Krakoa conjured up and of new approaches to bring the dispersed mutants in.

"Still nothing on Kitty's situation?" he asked.

Logan shrugged. "Sage mentioned something about genetic anomalies. She wants to do a full scan of something or other."

"Sage?" he tried to sound casual.

"She went up to the terrace a while ago," Storm's tone was not unkind, but the warning was there. "Don't follow". So much for unity and absolution, he thought.

He talked about something else then, some navigation prototype that Forge had been working on and tried not to dwell too much on whether he had picked Forge for a topic as a reminder to himself or in petty return for Ororo's knowing tone.

The last he'd seen Sage, she'd rejoined the Hellfire Club in some half-baked plan to protect Roberto. One he long suspected had less to do with strict necessity and more with banishing whatever demons that place still held over her.

And since then, he had... Gods. So much for not thinking about it. He had shot Charles Xavier in the head and burned worlds to kill a little girl. He though he was saving them all. He was still in awe they had forgiven him.

But not she, not going by Storm's tone. It wasn't that he didn't suspect it. He could have found her, probably. But she hadn't sought him out, not since she had returned, and his suspicion was enough to keep him from trying.

He tried to keep up with the conversation, and banish the jumbled thoughts from his mind, eventually just growing resentful at how many not-think-about-its the evening was bringing him.

"I think I'll just grab something to eat", he said after a lull, and fooling nobody. He saw Storm throwing Jean a concerned look. But Jean had by then grabbed Logan's arm and was playfully whispering something in his ear. And if Storm had any thoughts about that, kind or otherwise, she was keeping them to herself.

He wandered aimlessly, navigating the sea of people in his way. He made no note of faces, paid no mind to fleeting greetings. He grabbed some too small canape from a passing tray and munched on it absentmindedly.

What he wanted from a reunion, he couldn't tell. Forgiveness? Friendship? Her trust was sparingly given and her friendship rarely, and yet, somehow, she had given him both. He treasured them, and he hoped that she had known it. But he had squandered them the moment he pulled that trigger. She was far too clever to make the same mistake twice, he thought bitterly.

What he needed, he realized, was a chance to tell her. He wanted her to know his story from him. And whatever her choice was after that, he would just have to deal with it.

On a whim, he stopped to select a glass of red wine from those offered by well put together men in suits. It was the darkest he could find and, he was told, the sweetest. Those had always been her favorites.

He looked around room, with its colorful garments and plastered smiles and tried to find the way to this terrace. There were large windows and glass doors leading to patios, but nothing indicating an "up", as Storm had put it. Until, half hidden between a plant and a statue, he spotted what would be a rather nondescript door, if not for the biometric lock beside it. The upper floors, it seemed, were out of bounds to humans.

He let the biometric door take a scan of his cornea and pushed it open, stopping at the entrance to take a breath. It was cooler here and quieter, without the brouhaha of conversations and background music.

He made a slow way up the stairs, each step an opportunity to consider his words. His explanation of the unexplainable.

At the top he blinked against the darkness of the night. He saw her immediately, a lone figure leaning over the railing, taking in the sights of the river. In the same position he'd seen her a hundred times before, whenever she needed to take a break from her data.

He didn't approach her. Not yet. The sight of her took his breath way and he was happy just to take in the sight of her, the familiarity of her pose. "Fear," the nagging voice told him. As long as he didn't see her, he could still hope. Once they'd spoken, he could no longer hold on to that.

He pondered how she liked it, this brave new world of mutants and why she stayed. She, who'd always been the staunch defender of humans, who'd argue him to exhaustion about the need to protect them from those whose ruling council she now responded to.

He wondered what was in it for her, but then, he hardly knew what was in it for him. This wasn't the future that he knew.

"Atonement," the voice the at the back of his head, that he was determined not listen to, replied.

He gathered his courage and stepped into the moonlight. She must have heard his steps. He knew her well enough to realize that she must have been aware of him even before he reached the doorway. But she had not reacted, and even now, she did not turn his way.

The distance, the physical one at least, was short enough. He faced her profile. The breeze blew at her hair and he was close enough to touch, yet, she remained as immobile as before.

Storm did try to warn him.

Confession, he suddenly thought. Kurt had explained it to him once. By telling a priest of their transgressions and performing a small token of penance, believers would be clean of their sins. It had made little sense to him then, this idea of talking the evil out of the past.

Was that what he needed from her?

"So be it," he thought. He placed the glass of wine on the railing and slid it her way.

"You don't have to talk", he finally said, "but I'd appreciate it if you'd listen."

If he counted seconds in heartbeats, then there must have been enough of them for him to grow old.

Her blue eyes never moved and she didn't glance his way. But after a pause, she had uncurled her arm from where it rested on the railing, and taken the glass.

It wasn't the reunion of his dreams, nor the debacle of his nightmares. It was acquiescence to hear him out and apparently, all the welcome he was going to get.

It was something.

"I grew up in a concentration camp. Two, actually. I was moved. My parents came here to escape the bomb that took out Australia. All they did was die slower."

He had no idea why he was telling her this. She new his life story. They all new his life story. The cautionary tale of the big bad future that is coming for you, if you quit the fight.

"The Mutants that weren't depowered were just powerless when I grew up. And we all knew why we were there. Because one of us killed 6 million of them."

"Six million, Sage. Taken out by a damn kid. One kid, a handful of minutes and we lost our future and our powers and our freedom. You know what's worse? Half of us in there thought we belonged there. That we were too dangerous to be let out. That it was safer."

He looked at the floor, the river, the sky. He looked everywhere but her. He didn't think he could stand to watch her mask fall, to get a glimpse of her thoughts. Instead, he turned and focused on the skyline. His mouth was dry and his head was racing, but he pressed on.

"I know what Maddrox told you. He wasn't wrong, but he wasn't right either. I wasn't the only one to hate her. We all did. We hated the idea of her and what she had done. We might not know who she was, but we knew what she meant - the evil we could do. But I didn't grow up plotting to kill Hope. I didn't come here to take her out. By the time I met you, I didn't think she would exist anymore."

He ran a hand over his face and risked a sideways glance. She was still looking ahead, but her jaw showed definite signs of tension now that hadn't been there before. Although she sipped her wine, she was as careful not to look at him as he'd been not to look at her.

"At least she doesn't think it's poisoned," he thought. But his wit did not amuse him. He'd come tonight to be bored and leave early not for whatever this was. In any case, it was too late to stop now.

"Storm told me I was possessed by a demon," the taste of that was bitter, yet he wanted to hold on to it. "She never told me when."

He closed his eyes. He took a very long, very deep breath.

"I didn't do it because I was possessed."

He exhaled.

"And it wasn't madness. At least not at the start."

"You were all dead. All myths. I didn't want to harm the kid, but how many people can you allow to die for the sake of one child?"

"I thought it was the only way to keep it from happening. The war. The concentration camps. Everything… If only I could stop her, it didn't have to happen. You, all of you. You wouldn't have to die."

He shouldn't have eaten. Or maybe he should have eaten something more substantial. Whichever one would make the dregs of his meal stop churning in his stomach, trying to find their way back out.

"And then I shot Charles," there. The thing he didn't want to say. The thing he never meant to do. He'd meant to save the dream and instead he'd nearly killed the dreamer.

"It was different after that. I wasn't just saving the future, I needed to fix the past. And I started to believe that I didn't have a choice. It took over every thought, every waking moment – I had to fix it. You see, if I killed her, then time would be set back. Nothing would have changed. He would still be alive. All those people on those planets, they…"

"I didn't think they were real. None of it had to be real, as long as she died."

"I used to wonder what sort of person would kill six million. I knew, I was sure, that this is an evil that is born, because there could be nothing on earth to justify it being made."

"Now I know."

He closed his eyes. She had done what he asked of her. She had listened, and he had told her his confession. Now, all there was left was to wait for his sentence.

It never came.

He had hoped for forgiveness and prepared for anger. However she chose to express her current contempt of him, he thought himself ready and willing to accept it. Instead, he got nothing.

The deafening silence was an unexpected blow. He had bared his fears, his regrets to her and she hadn't found them even worthy of acknowledgment. As if his words were nothing. As if he meant nothing.

He seethed. The X-Men had forgiven him. Either in earnest or due to their newfound unity, they had welcomed him back into the fold. What did it matter if she wouldn't? What did he care that she didn't?

"I slept with Jean."

He felt stupid as soon as he said it. As if that could cause her pain.

He watched her closely for a sign, a hint of something. Anything, really. She swirled the glass between her fingers, apparently lost in the red waves within, and, eventually, raised it into a long sip.

At last, his patience was rewarded. She repeatedly, soundlessly tapped her fingers against the side. A sign, certainly. Sage was not in the habit of wasting gestures. But of what? Irritation? Frustration? Impatience at the disclosure of a seemingly unrelated pecadillo?

He sighed, a sign of frustration of his own. It didn't use to be like this. He used to be able to read her silences almost as well as her words. She could be infuriatingly silent, he knew. To others. And meanwhile, he'd grown quietly proud of his ability to decipher her.

But maybe, it dawned on him, it wasn't so much that he'd been particular good at it. Only that he'd been paying attention, and she'd let him see it. Their own form of wordless communication. Before. When she still trusted him.

"Jean was the first one I saw. The first I heard," he went on, "even before I came here."

"And she's…," he struggled with his thoughts,"she never lost herself. After the Phoenix. After the D'Bari. After all the deaths and all the dying. She didn't lose herself. She could still hope and laugh and see the good in others. She could still _believe._"

"I thought she understood. I thought she could tell me, how do deal with...afterwards. How to carry that."

"She didn't look at me with disgust. And I though, if Jean Grey can believe in me, maybe I am not lost. Maybe I can still still hope. When we were together it felt like...like..."

"Redemption."

The sound of her voice was like a jolt. For a moment, he just stared, and she just sipped. He scrambled to gather his thoughts at her sudden contribution, to find a suitable answer that might both satisfy her and produce a response.

Unable, he allowed silence to settle while trying to find some hidden meaning behind her statement. But her tone had neither anger nor forgiveness in it. And certainly no hurt. It was simply the description of a process.

Redemption, he decided, was apt, but her accuracy only served as an irritant. The months of introspection, the nightmares, the fear. The horror at the realization of what he had become and how easily it had been to slip into the role of the monster, they were all somehow lessened by being so neatly labeled and packaged.

But that was Sage. Accurate to fault, brutal in her analysis and unencumbered by such weaknesses as compassion and regrets.

"No," said the stubborn voice at the back of his head, "that's not true."

He rubbed at his eyes and tried to shake the bitterness off. He'd seen her quietly consumed with regrets, about Emma, about Jean, about the child Jeffrey, all of those she'd failed to save. He'd seen first hand her hurt at Xavier's betrayal, her fear of what confronting Bogan might mean.

And he'd heard, oh, so many times, her passionate defense of what the X-Men must stand for, on how being a haven for mutants wouldn't suffice, not while the humans got hurt.

And he couldn't for the life of him understand what brought her to Krakoa.

He sighed and went to stand by her side, shoulder to shoulder, much like in the times when their silences were comfortable.

The breeze was warm and the lights of the city reflect brilliantly on the water. But even when he closed his eyes and no matter how much he tried to empty his mind, it didn't feel like peace.

"Redemption," he said out loud, tasting the word.

He wondered if her own process was still ongoing. And he thought of Jean and Rogue and Logan and Rachel. So many of them, still trying, enjoying whatever peace their own inner battles had brought.

And, he couldn't help it, he thought of them. The other ones. The ones who'd shown up, simply because they could, proclaiming their belief in a peaceful future, when all they'd ever made was war.

"They never regretted it, not a thing," he whispered, "they still don't think any of it was wrong, only that Krakoa is better. Stronger."

"Not Magneto, not Sinister or..." Shaw, he almost said, "any of them."

He didn't push the thought away, not this time. But it did occur to him that some thoughts are better kept silent. Unspoken, they can be ignored. Voiced, they become real. And the enormity of it can sink you.

"Sage?" his voice was so small then, "What if I don't believe in the future?"

She looked at him then. Her head to the side, her eyes, so clear and blue, taking in the meaning of this question. Bishop didn't flinch and he didn't look away. If honesty was all she'd take from him, then he'd give her at least that much.

He observed her in his stead, his gaze calm and open. Some part of him admitted to the possibility that this was further betrayal, that a misstep at this point could mean losing so much more than just the trust he'd sought to rebuild. He search her face for any signs that she considered him a traitor.

Instead, he found something else.

"She looks tired," he thought. As tired as he was. Somewhere behind those piercing eyes, there was a shadow, the one she sometimes got. Like all the things that make her want to quit are the things that make her keep on fighting.

She took a step back, finally breaking eye contact, her analysis now complete. He lowered his head to look up at her, curious at her conclusion. Whatever her findings had been, she kept them well guarded. But there was a hint of sadness to her he had not been expecting.

"Thank you for the wine, Lucas."

Gently, she sat the glass he'd brought her on the railing.

Half-empty.

He watched her walk way, listening to the click clack of her heels on the tile, to the door shutting behind her and slumped against the railing, depleted and confused.

Maybe, he thought, he'd been so eager to regain her trust that he forgot to not trust her. Maybe he should keep listening. For the footsteps that should be coming up the stairs, ready to take him.

He waited. And he heard the breeze rustling leaves. And laughter and the faraway music. But the footsteps never came. And after a while, he found that he could breathe again.

He tried to make sense of the last hour, of the unexpected conclusion he'd arrived at, but his thoughts kept circling back to her, his mistrust in Krakoa and her puzzling reaction weaving in and out of focus.

He found himself thinking of the shadow behind her eyes and of the cloning collective. Of Xavier's mental back-ups. Of how easy it would be abuse it. Of how someone so guarded would like to have her body and mind cataloged, stored and copied.

He thought of the council and those who sat on it. Of the man who sold her to a king and the king who sold her to a monster.

He remembered her moments of silent fury, her maddening control over her emotions.

And when he smiled sadly, he understood.

He recognized the sadness he'd just seen in her and knew what the lack of footsteps meant - she didn't believe in the future either.

Maybe she didn't quite have the same faith in him as she did before, but if the time came, he'd have an ally.

He picked up the glass she'd left, ready to rejoin the party below and looked at the left over wine.

Half-full.

He had something. And he could work with something.


End file.
